iQuit (again)
The only way to beat device dependence
This summer my flip phone died. The 3G network that powered my outdated little number was discontinued and a 5G flip phone hadn’t quite come along yet. So, really, I had a good excuse when I took an old iPhone out of a drawer. I had somewhat famously quit smartphones in 2018 and published a book about the experience. For nearly four years I walked around quietly smug while most other Americans spent on average a full waking month out of every year on their phones. The fact that I was about to power up an iPhone again didn’t trouble me much. I was 100% sure when I slid the SIM card out of the flip and popped it temporarily into the temporary device that there wasn’t a chance in hell that I’d go back to being a regular user.
Eight months later my “temporary” iPhone had found its familiar groove in my brain.
I won’t waste your time by telling you about how I rejoined the shuffling mob of the looking-down-lost and went back to my acupuncturist so that she could once again treat my “text neck.” I won’t recount how I came to ignore Goodbye Phone, Hello World’s advice and stopped taking paper-based reading material on the subway. I won’t mention how I came to violate all the schemes that I and all the other digital detox gurus out there espouse to help a user curb device addiction: hiding apps in squirreled…
